[Hillary Knox]

I highly second that recommendation. The film looks great. I just wish I *hadn’t* seen it in 3D.

[Hillary Knox]

I’ll preface this by saying that I have absolutely zero experience with Resolve’s noise reduction feature. (+1 for Neat Video, by the way) However, philosophically, I personally prefer to have noise reduction as an integral part of the color grading process, & preferably earlier in the processing chain. But I’d like to hear some pros/cons on what people think of that statement…

Regardless of the excellence (or lack thereof) of Resolve’s NR, I think the coolest thing it does is HSL qualified- or windowed NR. I would think that should go a long way toward solving any blurriness problems.

[Hillary Knox]

Answered my own question on the Adobe forums: https://forums.adobe.com/message/3843562

Short answer, for anyone else who might care: the feature doesn’t exist yet.

[Hillary Knox]

I’m not keying blue- or green screen. I’m keying stuff in the scene like fleshtones, clothing, backgrounds, and overblown highlights. Regardless of whether or not I’m going about things in the right way or whether I need to re-shoot, both of which could very well be true, my original question remains unanswered and could potentially apply to many other situations that may or may not involve keying.

Is there some kind of order of operations difference between stacking effects on a single adjustment layer (or on the clip layer itself) vs spreading them out over several adjustment layers but still in the same order?

[Hillary Knox]

Ok, maybe this will clarify…

If I have the exact same clip in 2 separate comps. In Comp 1 I have 5 effects on a single adjustment layer, and in Comp 2 I have 5 adjustment layers with the same effects, 1 effect each spread over the 5 adjustment layers (in the same order). Should I theoretically expect to get the exact same image in both comps?

Here’s the reason I’m asking. I’m doing color correction that occasionally involves a lot of keying (which I’m doing in Colorista II). I’m finding that in order for the Colorista II keyer to work based on previous effects (i.e. Levels, Hue/Sat, or other Colorista instances) I’m having to put it on another Adjustment Layer for the keyer to take the earlier adjustments into account. Otherwise, if it’s on the same adjustment layer, the keyer disregards the previous effects & uses the un-effected clip as the source for the key.

I’m wondering if this is just the way the Colorista II keyer works, or if this is a global After Effects-wide order-of-operations thing that I don’t fully have a handle on. I understand orders of operations, and that Adjustment Layers affect all layers below it, that’s not really my question. I guess my question is, what is the difference in behavior between stacked effects on a single adjustment layer vs the same effects spread out over multiple adjustment layers? And is it predictable & consistent? Or is it just common knowledge that sometimes you have to use multiple adjustment layers based on the specific effect combinations that you’re using?

[Hillary Knox]

Thanks. Yeah you guys came to the same conclusions I did. The sequence settings are all correct…I talked to the director & none of that was done on purpose. I guess it is, and shall remain, a mystery.

[Hillary Knox]

I haven’t torture-tested it yet (and not to take anything away from Automatic Duck, which, in all fairness, I’ve never used)…but, I have had some pretty good success in the FCP > AE direction by using Premiere as an intermediate step. Export an XML from FCP, Import the XML into Premiere, save the Premiere project, go into AE, Import Premiere project. And viola, more or less. You might have to re-order or sort your layers based on in-point to give you something more like what you want, but maybe, maybe not. So far, for me, it’s worked pretty great.

Don’t ask me about getting stuff back into FCP by the reverse method. I’m not saying it’s not possible, but I haven’t tried it.

[Hillary Knox]

Ah-ha! Interesting. I’ll definitely look into it. Thanks!

[Hillary Knox]

Yeah I know the blade tool…if I was going to do it in FCP, that’s what I’d use. I was hoping for something more automated, but until I find it, sounds like that’s the quickest way to do it.

I’m sure I’ve got some Finder tool somewhere that I’ll use for batch renaming, or I’ll just use Automator.

Thanks for your help!

[Hillary Knox]

I’d never try to actually edit anything in AE. I suppose I could do this in Final Cut, but it would be just as much, if not more manual work, which I’m trying to avoid – not so much trying to avoid the work, but trying to avoid the mistakes that come with humans doing repetitive mindless tasks. Doing it in After Effects, at least I have a chance of automating & human-proofing more of the process. Magnum already does half the work for me, and it’s more reliable in terms of frame-accuracy than I am. I just need to figure out a way to automate, or semi-automate the render queue & the file naming.